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For the first time...

Picture taken from Google images

♫
Crickets humming set a tune

Under sleeping stars I sing
for you ♫

The rusty hinges of the gate creaked as Noah opened it
cautiously and stepped outside. He padded on the crunchy gravel carefully till
he reached the soft dirt road that diverted from the main path into the fields.
Sneaking away from the house each night was a terrible risk, but it was a risk
he was willing to take every single night of his life.

His constricted chest
loosened as the shining death light of his front porch dimmed into oblivion.His feet found a new rhythm to walk on, flicking off the
dust and ashes of a life that was choking him incessantly.

♫ Walking
on dirt that seems so green

Flicking ashes off my toes so clean ♫

He let his mind drift away in different directions; his
fingers absentmindedly nursing a new bruise on his arm. It was the same story
everyday- middle school, high school… people were so wrong when they say that
things change. For Noah, they never did. Every chapter of his life was just an
extension of the previous one.

The underdog always remains the underdog, except that the
‘underdogs’ in his ‘school’ were treated differently. There was no use
resisting; it took him 7 fractured bones to learn that lesson and there was no
use complaining; things always got worse.

He tried not to brood on how wretched his life was- it was
just an unnecessary exercise to his tear glands. But it wasn’t like this
always, thought Noah; it wasn’t like this when his mom was still with him.

♫
A piece of my heart, it broke with you

These stars I talk with, they
know it too ♫

Fairy lights. Magic chants. Doors that looked like walls.
Walls that looked like doors. Colors splashed on every free surface of their
tiny home, sheets of music lying everywhere. And his mother’s lilting soprano
voice issuing now and then from behind bookshelves and underneath beds. Noah
learnt the 7 notes of music even before he could say ‘mama’ and that, his
mother claimed, had been the best moment of her life.

Living with his mother meant giving a free reign to his
imagination- almost every normal thing in his life was defined at a macro level
as something more imaginative, more interesting. He battled with monsters every
morning he woke up, saved hundreds of drowning lives in his bath tub, harbored thousands of homeless creatures on his bed and created millions of forests,
tarantulas and green ogres in his tiny flower bed. Night meant wild, high
sprung stories with his mother ; nights which knew no boundaries to what they
thought, what they said.

♫
Is it a tree that’s shaking,

Or a monster awaken?

From it good old rumbling
sleep

Is it a firework going,

Or bombs exploding?

Waging war like my head and
me. ♫

Noah’s blissful life ended the day he turned 10 and his
mother lost the battle she was fighting with her life. “Don’t sing” the doctor
had said. “I’d rather die” had been his mother’s reply and that’s what she did- Lost her life rather than losing her voice. But then, her voice was her life.

A father he didn’t know of took his custody and in one
shattering moment, his life changed. School was shifted, town was shifted,
house was shifted and to that day he had never been able to call that dull
cream colored building his home.

The abuse and bullying at house and school alike wasn’t enough
to dampen his spirits, but what did break his heart entirely was when his
guitar was broken and thrown in the attic.

Life changed after that. Changed in frightening, disturbing
ways and every day he buried deeper within himself in a place where nothing
could hurt him anymore.

♫
It feels so good inside my head

A place to escape when I am on
my bed ♫

The fairy lights had fused out from his life that was taken
away from him in two quick strokes of fate. He could no longer be the superman,
hoping that his troubles would end some day; 7 years of pretense had exhausted
his imagination.

♫
It feels so good inside my world

Where pain and anger is almost
null ♫

His fingers ached to strum the strings of his guitar again,
his ears longed for the voice that sang him to sleep in all its pain, his heart
ached to stop the pretense for once and for all and just be himself… just be
himself. Why was that so hard?

♫
So I just walk, walk, walk away

Shedding the crumbs of my life
on my way ♫

He walked till he reached a broken wall and stepped over the
loose stones, pausing till he heard a panting sound join him.

“Hey there Jeff,” he said, bending down and ruffling the dog’s
ears. “Sorry, but no biscuit for you today. Didn’t get dinner myself” The dog
whined and licked his face, as if comforting him for both their hunger.

Noah walked briskly to the place he was seeking and slid
down beside the grey stone with a sigh.

Margaret Jane

1978-2005

“Her voice was her life… and her death alike”

Noah stared at it for a long moment before he dusted the
loose earth beside her grave in quick, practiced movements. His fingers worked
in a frenzy, as if they were searching for life in those cold, unmoving depths
and every nerve in his body jangled alive as his hands found a long object
wrapped in a dirty cloth.

The guitar he had rescued from their old, rambling home came
out like his personal angel in the chilly night and as his bruised fingers
found the blessed strings of his life, every pain, every anguish of the world he was
forced into peeled away from his soul. In every note of his guitar that rang out
that night, his heart started beating for the first time that day; in the
breeze of his voice mingling in harmony with the tune, he started breathing for
the first time that day and in every word his heart wrote for his lips to sing,
he started living… for the first time that day…

I am happy you felt what i wanted to convey DS.and ah well, i like keeping my stories simple and looking back... i dont think i could have ended it any other way... I simply had to give Noah his life back... his music back :)